1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a teleconference system featuring a call-up. It can realize, without negatively affecting the efficiency of an existing exchange, a function of registering the participants and the date and time of a teleconference; a function of automatically notifying an invitation to, a cancellation of, an absence from and a status confirmation of a teleconference; and a function of automatically holding a teleconference by calling up the participants for an online connection at a specified time on a designated date.
2. Description of the Related Arts
With the advancement and furtherance of telephone services, a teleconference service has currently been put into use. A conventional teleconference service uses a teleconference starting system by which a call originating user personally calls up the participants in sequence for having them connected online.
However, such a system has a problem of functional complication, because it requires the call originating user to call up all the participants one by one at the specified time on the designated date.
To overcome this problem, a system has been invented for automatically setting the communications paths of a teleconference, such that a call originating user registers in a teleconference system in an exchange, the participants and the date and time of a teleconference, so that the teleconference system calls up the participants on the date and time of the teleconference. (Refer to Japanese Patent Application Circulars (A) No. 1988-244961 and No. 1989-264464.)
The invention described in Japanese Patent Application Circular (A) No. 1988-244961 purports to enable the participants to be automatically connected online on the registered time of date, by having an automatic private branch exchange realize a function of storing the date and time of a teleconference run and automatically calling up the telephone sets of the participants on the date and time of a teleconference run, a function of automatically connecting the lines from the telephone sets of the responding ones of the participants to the teleconference communications paths, and a function of enabling the mutual communications among the participants.
The invention described in Japanese Patent Application Circular (A) No. 1989-264464 comprises a teleconference sponsor's telephone set having a monitor for displaying data from the exchange and a voice storer connected to a main communications path switch of the exchange, in addition to having the above functions. This connects the participants to be automatically called up at the time and date of a teleconference run, the message recorded by the teleconference sponsor in the voice storer to be sent to the responding ones of the participants, and the status data of the responding ones of the participants to be displayed on the telephone set having a monitor.
As described above, the conventional systems cause the exchange to have the function for storing the data on the participants and the date and time of a teleconference run and the function for automatically connecting the participants online on the date and time of the teleconference run. Because an exchange must realize these functions in addition to its indigenous functions, a potential problem exists that the exchange may become less efficient in executing its basic jobs.
In addition, the conventional systems require a process for having a subscriber who will be absent inform the teleconference sponsor of his absence, thereby having the teleconference sponsor eliminate the name of the nonparticipating subscriber from the participants' name list registered in the exchange. Also, because his absence cannot be notified in a batch to other participants, the subscriber who will be absent must inform each of the attending participants of his absence either directly in person or indirectly via the teleconference sponsor.